I am encouraged to see ever-expanding ecosystems in the life insurance space. They’re helping insurers bring in more diverse data, specialized skills, leading-edge technologies and new ideas that spark innovation. Moreover, these benefits are accessible through trusted partners, rather than insurers making costly and time-consuming investments to build the capabilities themselves. In fact, ecosystem collaboration is one of six insurance innovation trends our Generative AI model uncovered from this year’s entries in the Qorus-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards.

I see this trend accelerating as the insurance industry continues to undergo rapid changes, sparking the need for insurers to be even more agile, customer-centric and efficient in their operations. These needs require a flexible core digital insurance platform that connects partner platforms and technologies through a service integration layer. This notion of “loose coupling”—the adaptability of platforms to readily integrate with any partner you choose—provides further opportunity from the ecosystem.

We envision the future insurance ecosystem as an even more dynamic space than previously seen in the industry. As integration becomes democratized, it provides another way for insurers to mitigate risk from technology changes resulting from M&A activity among tech partners. It also helps insurers capitalize on opportunities from new data sources as well as emerging new insurtech partners and the capabilities they offer.

Further, we see a rise in cross-industry collaborations resulting in new ecosystems that leverage emerging technologies and data-driven insights to deliver better outcomes for insurers and their customers. A good example of this is in digital customer engagement where I’ve seen cross-industry solutions and best practices enable insurers to accelerate and improve their call center customer-to-agent conversion. Today, genAI, once an emerging technology, now powers this cross-industry capability.

So, when you consider the top three innovation trends from our award nominations—digital customer experience, health and well-being convergence, and advanced analytics and personalization—it’s clear that ecosystem partnerships could help insurers accelerate innovation in these key areas.

Let’s talk about how insurance ecosystems can ignite innovation in your organization.